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--- modernity [2016/07/21 18:25] – Ryan Schram (admin)
+++ modernity [2016/07/21 18:25] – Ryan Schram (admin)
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 In fact, they aren't. All societies change, but no two societies end up in the same place.
-There is no such thing as modernity in the sense that some societies are objectively different or more advanced than other societies. Although a lot of people use this word--modern--and it may seem perfectly innocent, but if you look closely at how people use it, you can see that it hides an ethnocentric bias. If a contemporary society is different from the observer's, then the ethnocentric observer usually says that these differences are due to the fact that the other society is "still" stuck in the past.
+There is no such thing as modernity in the sense that some societies are objectively different or more advanced than other societies. Although a lot of people use this word--modern--and it may seem perfectly innocent, but if you look closely at how people use it, you can see that it hides an [[ethnocentrism_and_cultural_relativism|ethnocentric]] bias. If a contemporary society is different from the observer's, then the ethnocentric observer usually says that these differences are due to the fact that the other society is "still" stuck in the past.
 There are even many anthropologists who look to hunter-gatherers and other societies as "our contemporary ancestors" (Chagnon 1983: 214). That is, they are contemporary, but hunter-gatherers and rainforest dwellers are living examples of the prehistoric past. And who is the "we"? These anthropologists assume that they and their readers are distinct from the people they study, and that the observers' society is the model for analyzing other people's ways of life.